Quotes from Neil Strauss

Perhaps the people who hurt you the most when they leave are the ones you shouldn't have been with anyway, because they do it without compassion.

He spread out in his chair like a melting shard of Swiss cheese and informed us: "The only lies I'll ever tell are: 'I won't come in your mouth' and 'I'll just rub it around your ass.'" It wasn't a pretty visual.

The number one characteristic of an alpha male is the smile," he said, beaming an artificial beam. "Smile when you enter a room. As soon as you walk in a club, the game is on. And by smiling, you look like you're together, you're fun, and you're somebody.

So if you remain loyal to people who abuse and mistreat you, that's called trauma bonding. If you only feel normal if you're doing something extreme or high-risk, that's trauma arousal. If you've developed intense self-loathing, you've got trauma shame. If you find chemical, mental, or technological ways to numb yourself and your feelings, that's trauma blocking.

No matter what the situation may be, the right course of action is always compassion and love.

If there was anything I'd learned, it's that the man never chooses the woman. All he can do is give her an opportunity to choose him.

Using words like casual and hang out, and the time constraint, were all part of a strategy to make the visit a low-pressure event. It's a much better way to get someone to commit to time with a stranger than AFC-style dinner dating, which can be a painful, drawn-out affair that involves two people who may have nothing in common stuck together for an entire night of awkward conversation.

Never underestimate your own capacity to care. "I

Once you realize that most people are just like you—and that they're actually seeking your approval—you'll start to become socially fearless.

Most things are not about you, though they do reveal how you think about yourself.

How will I know the difference?" "Wounds bring drama and trauma. They don't bring comfort.

Death is a guillotine blade hanging over our heads, reminding us every second of every day that this life we treasure so much is no more important to the universe than those of the two hundred thousand insects each of us kills with the front of our car every year.

The solution, she elaborates, is for couples to do novel and exciting things together (to release dopamine and get the romance rush)

But I couldn't commit to the time. I needed to resuscitate my career.

Here," he said. "I brought this for you." It was a small hardcover edition of an eighteenth century book called The Path of the Just with a note he had written for me inscribed on the title page. It quoted the Talmud: Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world. So he was trying to save me. Why? I was having fun.

Beauty is common but what's rare is a great energy and outlook on life. Tell me, what do you have inside that would make me want to know you as more than a mere face in the crowd?" If she begins to list qualities, this is a positive IOI. 12

He was a flower that bloomed with attention—be it positive or negative—and wilted when ignored. Peacock theory wasn't just to attract girls.

His weapon is his voice. After years of studying everyone from master hypnotists to Hawaiian Kahunas, he claims to have found the technology—and make no mistake about it, that's what it is—that will turn any responsive woman into a libidinous puddle. Jeffries, who claims to be the inspiration for Tom Cruise's character in Magnolia, calls it Speed Seduction. Jeffries

Instead of putting others down, try improving yourself instead. The only person you have a right to compete with is you.

fell silent and did what the PUAs call triangular gazing, looking slowly from her left eye to her right eye and then to her lips to create suggestive sexual tension. She

The secret to life is not to take it personally. The things people do and say are not always

I had violated one of Ross Jeffries's only ethical rule of seduction: Leave her better than you found her.

Strip away the community bond and the seduction business interests that united us, and what was left? Six guys chasing after a limited subset of available women. Wars have been fought, world leaders shot, and tragedies wrought by males claiming territorial rights over the opposite sex. Perhaps we'd just been too blind to see that Project Hollywood was doomed from the start by the very pursuit that had brought it together. After

Life's too short to be stuck in your own past